Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Sloooooooooow Progress on Renewables

I assembled this for something I'm working on:


Here renewable energy = hydro + geothermal + solar/PV + wind + biomass

Although renewables have increased by about 4 percentage points in 8 years, which is -0.5 pct pts/year. Not fast enough. Drew Shindell says we need a decrease in fossil fuel emissions of something like 2.7%/yr.

I also came up with this:


Data from EIA.

1 comment:

JoeT said...

By the way, David, if you're interested in what the prospects are for nuclear fusion (this is my field) to impact the climate crisis, here's a summary of the new cost and scheduling for ITER.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/04/updated-panel-backs-iter-fusion-project-s-new-schedule-balks-cost

Next week, DOE will announce its intention whether it wants to stay in ITER or not. (They will probably go with "stay in"). The Senate has already made its intention known to pull out.

In short, my assessment is that fusion will have no impact until the end of the century. Unfortunately, far too late to prevent us from warming up another 2 or 3 degrees.